Words was written several years ago; this track is a fresh version of the song. It is no less relevant to me than it was when I wrote it, unfortunately.

Those of us who were born into a peaceful, thriving, first-world setting cannot appreciate the desperate lives of people born into more hopeless surroundings. Around the time of writing this song, I befriended a man my age from Lebanon. As a teenager in Beirut, he told me stories of running and hiding behind dumpsters and torched cars to avoid gunfire in the streets - just to walk home from school. He was more grateful to be living in the USA than me. I was ashamed of the way I took my blessed life for granted and how disconnected I was from the pain and suffering of people I only knew about from television.

This song came from that realization. In the final analysis, I hope that my actions will have spoken louder than my words, which just aren't enough.

Here's a description of the stunning photograph: In this Friday, Jan. 24, 2014 photo, Afghan refugee girl, Gul Bibi Shamra, 3, poses for a picture, while playing with other children in a slum on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan. For more than three decades, Pakistan has been home to one of the world’s largest refugee communities: hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have fled the repeated wars and fighting their country has undergone. Since the 2002 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, some 3.8 million Afghans have returned to their home country, according to the U.N.’s refugee agency.

(AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen - Photo used by permission) https://muhammedmuheisen.com/